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- cross-posted to:
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CBS News on Monday rebuked one of its star morning anchors, Tony Dokoupil, over an interview that he conducted last week with the author Ta-Nehisi Coates, in which Mr. Dokoupil challenged Mr. Coates’s views about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The episode began last Monday when Mr. Coates visited “CBS Mornings” on a publicity tour for his book “The Message,” which in one section compares Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to the Jim Crow laws of the American South. In describing what he witnessed on a 10-day trip to the region last year, Mr. Coates criticized other journalists for “the elevation of factual complexity over self-evident morality.”
From the start of the interview, Mr. Dokoupil directly challenged this framing, telling Mr. Coates that “the content of that section would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist.” The anchor added, “What is it that so particularly offends you about the existence of a Jewish state that is a Jewish safe place?”
“There’s nothing that offends me about a Jewish state; I am offended by the idea of states built on ethnocracy, no matter where they are,” Mr. Coates replied. The men parried for several minutes in a tense but civil manner, with Mr. Coates at one point saying: “Either apartheid is right or wrong. It’s really, really simple.”
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I just watched the interview, and you can too at this link right here.
Dokoupil was a major asshole as an interviewer. Dokoupil was inserting language as though they were Mr. Coates arguments. Dokoupil was engaging in classic strawman attacks on national TV.
I’ve watched CBS news on and off for years and Dokoupil has been on many of those pieces. Prior to this I thought him competent. I now have zero respect for Dokoupil as a journalist. He allowed his personal feelings and biases to overrule his journalist integrity. He should be ashamed of himself.
Editing to add: If you want to see a good journalist interview the same guest talking about the same book do so here with Jon Stewart and Mr Coates.
I recently heard Coates interviewed, and he had a very nuanced view of the entire difficult situation. The fact that the Dokoupil tried to dumb it down to a strawman argument is really telling.
Telling nothing good about Dokoupil.
“the elevation of factual complexity over self-evident morality.”
I found that tough to parse, but worth it.
“Either apartheid is right or wrong. It’s really, really simple.”
Well put.
Dokoupil just made himself look clueless. Like a sock puppet for Israel. Which he is.
Dokoupil just made himself look clueless.
Dokoupil made himself look worse than clueless. He made himself look like a racist.
Dokoupil made himself look worse than a clueless racist. He made himself look like a zionist.
Good, because that was some bullshit. Don’t fucking try to bait someone into making an antisemitic statement on TV. Especially someone much smarter than you.
He also implied that Coates’ book seems like something that would be in the backpack of an extremist on his way to blow something up.
The world is blowing up. But it’s blowing up because of human economic activity, which is ‘good’, so therefore that isn’t seen as ‘extremist’.
Yep. Just disgusting.
The close affiliations with Israel presents several very troubling and hard to square incompatibilities, not just around being for hard-right ethno states.
Things like the Lavon affair, where Israel showed a willingness to target US and British culture and businesses in Egypt with a view to pinning false flag attacks on ‘Islamic extremists’…
…or the Apollo affair, where they very likely stole the refined uranium to start a nuclear weapons program directly from the US.
Or the attack on the USS Liberty where they killed 35 Americans and injured over 100 more.
Or people like Jonathan Pollard and Ghislain Maxwell (whose father was a Mossad agent), who perhaps play for Israel more than they ever did for America.
These all demonstrate weaknesses and an exploitative relationship which us maintained for the benefit of the US Military industrial complex, and the perceived geopolitical benefists of destabilizating a petroleum rich region of the world…
…but the costs are heavy, and there’s an amount of self-harm in the US… A level of devotion to that seemingly one way self-harming relationship demonstrated by people like that reporter.
It’s almost like another maga cult. Right wing, openly racist, and oftern against American values and interests…
